State cuts 54 jobs at Caro Center

Published 7:00 pm, Thursday, January 20, 2005

CARO, Mich. (AP) - The state Department of Community Health has eliminated 54 jobs at Caro Center, a state psychiatric hospital in Tuscola County.

Officials said the cuts are needed to help balance the state budget, but area residents voiced concern that less staff will mean more patient escapes.

T.J. Bucholz, spokesman for the state Department of Community Health, said the cuts will allow the state to keep funding Medicaid.

When youre choosing between very important things  and patient care and staffing at the Caro Center are very important things  and comparing them to very vital things, such as making sure a grandparent or pregnant woman or child isnt left without health insurance, you choose the very vital things, Bucholz said.

State officials announced the 54 job cuts  which amount to 12 percent of the centers 450 workers  last week. All the jobs will be gone by the end of this month, though Bucholz said none of the centers security personnel will lose their jobs.

About 80 of Caro Centers 187 patients are forensic patients  living there because they have been ruled not guilty of crimes by reason of insanity, or because theyve been found mentally incompetent to stand trial.

According to police, Corbin A. Thomas, a forensic patient at the center, walked away from the facility last June and attacked four people at a nearby alternative high school several days later with a knife and hammer. Thomas, 28, of Saginaw, is scheduled to stand trial in March.

Forty of Caro Centers fired workers were resident-care aides.

That means you have less direct-care staff watching these patients, so … patient escape is more than likely going to happen, for sure, because of this, said Janine Ewald, who lives a mile from the center.